Search results

The purpose of this paper is to discuss some ethical issues in the internet encounter between customer and bank. Empirical data related to the difficulties that customers have when they deal with the bank through internet technology and electronic banking. The authors discuss the difficulties that customers expressed from an ethical standpoint.

The key problem of the paper is “how does research handle the user's lack of competence in a web‐based commercial environment?” The authors illustrate this ethical dilemma with data from a Danish Bank collected in 2002. The data have been structured by an advanced text analytic method, Pertex (by generation of intentionality of verbal actors from text).

The authors can conclude that the experience of lack of competency in internet banking implies a severe damage on the experience of the ethics of the good life and of the respect for the basic ethical principles of customer autonomy, dignity, integrity and vulnerability. However, increased experience of competency may imply experience of increased feeling of ethical superiority and of the good life among customers.

The important implication for managerial research of this study would be for banks to focus on customer competency with an ethical concern instead of only being concerned with technical solutions for effective internet operations.

Since more and more businesses are digitally based, the authors can foresee a potential generic problem of lack of competence for certain age groups and also of people from different social groups.

The paper provides an analysis of the ethics of on‐line banking on the basis of Pertex methodology and with the use of basic ethical principles of autonomy, dignity, integrity and vulnerability.

The concept of the balanced company refers to a company that is in good relations with its internal and external constituencies. Establishing such a balanced company largely depends on the corporate governance of the firm. The paper, therefore, aims to develop new insights into the appropriate design of corporate governance that fits with the notion of the balanced company.

The paper is conceptual and integrates various perspectives from stakeholder as well as norm theories to substantiate the appropriate governance system of a balanced company.

The proposed system of corporate governance rules that the interests of multiple stakeholders have to be considered and adequately balanced when corporate decisions are made. In this system, the interest of the enterprise provides the ultimate criterion to evaluate corporate decisions rather than the interest of one single group of constituencies. Corporate decisions have accordingly to serve the interest of the enterprise and to ensure its sustainable creation of value. This requires a principle based balancing of competing interests when the stakes of diverse constituencies collide.

The paper explicates the notion of the interest of the enterprise, explores the corresponding responsibilities of the board, and explains how competing interests of various constituencies have to be balanced.